Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

Edward Middleton wrote:

> Which "sensitive technology" are you referring to.  My understanding of 
> Japanese export controls was that they don't even require permanent 
> residence to have access to controlled technology.  I don't think the 
> issue is so much ethnicity as much as where the non-Japanese person 
> holds citizenship.  If you hold citizenship in a country were export 
> controls apply (e.g. a communist country) or one in which industrial 
> espionage is not really prosecutable, I would image you would have 
> problems.

You are thinking too much.  Maybe 90% of what constitutes "sensitive 
technology" is ... or was 30 years ago when I was just starting out 
working for Japanese companies the first time around ... anything that 
allows me to make the dollar you could make if you could set up your 
factory to operate the same way mine does.  Until not so many years ago 
-- about the late-1980s --  the only thing separating Japan from Korea 
and Taiwan was the fact that Japan didn't have to spend 30% of its 
national budget on self-defense.  Technologically, the three countries 
were quite similar and had similar access to raw materials and markets. 
 Japan just had more available cash.  Even today, it doesn't take a 
whole lot of work or research to make most consumer products better or 
cheaper depending upon market.  And for the most part, profitability 
depends upon process or access to cheaper materials and/or labor, not 
necessarily superior products, research, or technology.

True "industrial secrets" are few and far between in relation to the 
total manufacturing that goes on in any industry.  That's why most 
countries have treaties that treat the theft of original processes 
differently than copying the layout of a competitor's assembly line or 
their product design.   The theft of existing design and the manufacture 
of poor copies, or the theft of trademarks, product names, or designs is 
the far more common and more lucrative crime and it is the one that gets 
the most attention because it is the squeaky wheel.

This is not to say that there are not processes and technology that need 
to be more carefully controlled because they enable the enemies of Japan 
... and its allies ... to operate more secretively or gives them much 
greater power.  And it is also true that Japan has done an absolutely 
miserable job of controlling access to any of this.  But that 
dissemination has taken place with purchase orders and export permits 
and not through the use of spies, cameras, and careful analysis of 
electronic traffic in back rooms and secret hideouts.  The people who 
need to be prosecuted for those crimes are government employees, for the 
most part.  And heaven forfend that we prosecute Japanese government 
bureaucrats for being the overpaid, overeducated screwups they often are.

--
CL